Managing Migration: Finding Your Way in Final Cut Pro X

2-Pop by Oliver Peters

Editors moving from older versions of Apple Final Cut Pro to FCP X find that quite a bit of reorientation is required. Standard terminology and editing practices have been changed. It’s time to break the ice and understand what makes FCP X tick.

Events and Projects
In the past, an FCP “project” was the main session file that contained the data for edited sequences and bins. The “capture scratch” folder was the hard drive location that contained your media. Final Cut Pro X organizes clip information, media and edits into two libraries: Events and Projects. The data for these can be stored on your internal drive or any external hard drive. An Event is analogous to an FCP 7 bin or folder. It could have been called reel, bin or tape, but any of those names is borrowed from legacy workflows, so the term Event is as good as any.

Events contain the source clips, and the Event Library in the FCP X interface is tied to the Final Cut Events folder on your hard drive. When files are imported from a location on your hard drive or from a camera, the media can be either copied or transcoded to the Final Cut Events folder. If you choose not to copy the media, then only an alias appears in the Events folder, which in turn is linked to the actual media file in another location. Although edited sequences can be stored in an Event, it’s best to think of an Event as an accumulation of source media and treat it as such.

In an effort to make media management more robust, Apple uses unique file identifiers for media (or aliases) inside an Event folder. Media that is linked but not copied is subject to going offline if you move, remove or alter the source media files. This includes files that are altered by Adobe applications if they embed XMP metadata into the imported files. If you use both FCP X and Adobe applications, disable the XMP functions in your Adobe preferences. read more...